Current wireless 3G and 4G systems provide a good level of data connectivity to wireless devices, and, typically, in first-world countries, have a large amount of backhaul capacity, connecting access points to the larger Internet. Over this infrastructure, applications running on mobile devices typically access a variety of application programming interfaces (APIs) that are provided using known HTTP REST endpoints. In addition, specialized applications using such REST endpoints provide access to a variety of services, including services such as email or social services such as Facebook.
However, in developing countries, backhaul systems are frequently congested, have limited bandwidth, and are many hops away from servers on the western Internet. Worse, the direct connection to the mobile device is made using older 2G technology, which offers limited data networking capabilities. Furthermore, even in first-world countries, there may be particular geographic areas in which the same issues of limited bandwidth or limited data networking capabilities exist. Thus, it is desirable to provide these areas with Internet connectivity and access to a range of modern applications, such as email applications like Gmail and social networking applications, such as Facebook, and Twitter.
Furthermore, even if a first-world country has good bandwidth or good data networking capabilities, a user may be on a limited data plan in which the user can only download a certain amount of digital data during a particular time period, such as a month. It would be desirable to provide a way in which the user could download the digital data and access the applications without always using the allotted data of the limited data plan.
In addition, wireless network operators are continually facing challenges to provide the level and quantity of data access for some first-world countries. In particular, they either cannot build out their network infrastructure quickly enough to keep up with the user demand for data or do not want to expend the resources to build out their network infrastructure. It would be desirable to provide a way in which the network operator can provide the digital data access and access to the applications using other data networking resources.